RPS Tomb Raider Screenshots!

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Yes! You heard right. These are the only images from the forthcoming Tomb Raider reboot to be posted here on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, today. Never before seen in full on our website, you won’t see us posting these images anywhere else. If we do, we’ll sue us.

What a difference a week makes.

They’re a pretty gloomy, if fine looking bunch. Crank up your brightness, click on them for the full size versions, and squint at the following:

No worries.
The industry has read your feedback and come up with a great solution that will help all.

It has been confirmed to me that any game coming out on consoles in 2011 forward will now only require you to simply press “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start” to open doors, reload your weapon or interact with either your environment or NPCs in any way.

Look at the screenshots where Lara is holding a torch. Is it just me, or do her neck and torso just not fit together? The dirt on her skin stops exactly above the necklace… This drove me mad in Dragon Age Origins, but I can’t understand it in a game with a single playable character.

Anyone else already missing the knockabout silliness of the old games?
I don’t know this just looks off to me, maybe it’s just that playing as a woman and getting her horribly injured makes me feel a little uncomfortable especially when it’s going down the realism route.

I hope hope hope that these are just PR selected to look as distinct from the previous games as possible, otherwise I’m a bit worried as well, Bhazor. The most unsettling is the second one, both for taste and execution. Is this supposed to be some kind of Seven-style-serial-killer cave? Why is there a picture of a antique-world lemming on the wall? Who keeps the candles burning? Who ties up anatomy-lesson skeletons?
As for the new look, thinking back to TR1 / Anniversary, the atlantean beasts and environments had a lot of gore/vore aesthetics going on, which may count as a bit of a precedent in regards to the “edgy, strange, serious == blood, flesh, helplessness” design depicted in some of these screens. In short, I’m no fan of this here material (yet, perhaps), but I’ll see what the future holds for Young Lara v2.0 before mourning the franchise (yet again).

@Basilicus
No.
In videogames women are almost universally sexualized, just look at every previous Tomb Raider game. Now she’s gone into a gorey horror game moving it uncomfortably close to the torture porn films that are so in vogue since the film industry was taken over by fans of 80s B-movies.

And yes seeing a woman in pain, even if it’s a book film or game, makes me uncomfortable. So I guess that makes me the bad guy here then.

I know this is all very subjective, but I’d like to add that seeing anyone being inflicted pain (if depicted realistically or with enough cheap tricks to create empathy), be it woman, man, child or beast is not my definition of a good time. A good friend of mine has a thing for slasher/splatter flicks, and even when he abridges their stories it makes me lose my appetite for the rest of the day. A recent example was a certain french film, which on his retelling sounded so unbelievably cruel that I had to look it up on imdb to prove to myself that it even existed. Well, some of these screenshots remind me of stills from that movie.

Edit: so what I wanted to say is that if they’re really aiming for this aesthetic in their game, they might do so at least proudly and aim for the AO/18+ rating. But don’t expect me to enjoy playing that game then.

Yes, but we don’t know if this is torture porn pain or if it’s enjoying-watching-Harrison-Ford-gruff-it-out-as-Indiana-Jones pain. To me, it smacks of the latter. She seems to be exploring or committing some kind of heroic action in every photo but the one in which she’s hanging upside down. I’ve long wanted a female hero who can take a bit of action, wipe the blood from her lip, and continue to get the job done.

I mean, it’s like saying Alias was Jennifer Garner torture porn, because she gets tortured in the show. It’d be like saying what’s OK for Tom Cruise or Pierce Brosnan as larger-than-life spies isn’t OK for her. It would be ignoring 95% of everything else she does, but it wouldn’t be a very good action show unless she got the snot beat out of her from time to time, as I expect to happen to all action heroes – male or female.

Then again, this may be a cultural thing. I’m American. I like my action heroes scrappy and up against horrendous odds. You all seem to like action heroes with more panache and charm. There’s nothing wrong with either mold, but that’s my point. There’s nothing wrong with either mold, and we hardly know the setting of this scene, how it takes place, or what happens to whom therein.

It’ll be the one with Gainsbourg if it has a scene with scissors. It’s a really cool film, anyone who likes the old Cronenberg body horror films should enjoy it.

I was wondering – why would you worry that someone somewhere was getting off to it? Are you worried that someone somewhere is enjoying throwing lego Indy off a bridge? (I don’t mean that to be utterly facetious, I’m interested because I watch an epic amount of horror so your reaction is alien to me.)

Kudos to the developers for making Lara’s boobs smaller and her waist wider, she looks a little more realistic now, albeit it’s still the equivalent of a pretty actress playing a scientist in a Hollywood film, just not someone like Angelina Jolie now.

The movie mentioned by stahlwerk is Inside: link to imdb.com a masterpiece of suspense and one of the best examples of the New French Extremity: link to en.wikipedia.org . Martyrs has been mentioned before and that is also amazing:link to imdb.com . These movies should be seen by any horror aficionado. I fully support this type of movie.

Modestly-sized chesticles! Truly this is evidence of gaming’s new era of maturity.

In all seriousness, I really don’t think this is a good route to take the franchise, if you want to make a gritty dark survival adventure then I’m all for that, but tying it to the Lara Croft franchise seems to undermine that premise given the previous games. This looks more like Silent Hill than Lara Croft, bring back the ridiculously-proportioned, theiving, a-moral posh bird we all know or just resign her to the bin of “characters that are no longer valid” along with Duke Nukem et al and create a new franchise free from any baggage.

Of course, we all know that’s not how the games industry works, it being largely based around the flogging of horses (be they dead or alive).

No and I really hate arguing this because it always goes on death ears, its about knowing that a traditional IP will sell and then doing some creative with it and then knowing it won’t sell and losing that money(and recognition with it because well RPS is in a bubble)

So, I’m sure it’s unfashionable to still talk about body image issues in relation to Lara Croft, especially as she’s been rebootified and all that, but my GOSH are her arms a bit skinny. Particularly in that second to last screenshot.

If past performance indicates anything, shouldn’t she be spending half her time dangling from ledges? She tries it with those and she’ll be snapping.

(plus hyperbole and fretting about anorexia, skeletor and true life magazines etc)

I am very impressed with the poses she’s in though. Some potentially quite realistic movement by the look of it (except they are just selected images and it may look horrid when in actual motion)

The improportionality of character design and physical ability has been about for a while. I would wager you can sprint faster and longer than Commander Shepard. And jump higher than Gordon Freeman. And they both have tricked out upgrades, or something. I always thought Altair looked a little heavy for all the climbing he did as well. Then there’s Mirror’s Edges Faith, who could believably be quite light, but still no where near enough upperbody strength on display to do the tricks she does. Not to mention the original Lara. I don’t recall her being anything but ‘buxom’.

I notice a fair few comments on the proportion of arms, body etc.. I thought I’d stumbled onto the forums at concept art. org :) Very heartening that you are all finding your inner Auguste Rodin. Lets hope that this game does not lead us to the gates of hell ( a sculptors jk )

In one other notable comment I must quote the redoubtable Basilicus –

“…but the one in which she’s hanging upside down. I’ve long wanted a female hero who can take a bit of action, wipe the blood from her lip, and continue to get the job done”

Was I the only one for who this evoked entirely the wrong sort of image of the game. I blame it on the websites that I err.. accidentally stumble upon from time to time. You are looking for a sim card before you know it you have accidentally added an ampersand, which is so near the I on a querty keyboard… I’m not on trial here!